151 research outputs found

    High School Guidance Counseling as a Vocation

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    The purpose of this paper is to explore the field of high school guidance counseling as a vocation. The discussion includes information regarding guidance counseling in the United States in general and Arkansas specifically. The personal and educational requirements for guidance counseling are discussed as well as the requirements for establishing an adequate counseling program in a high school. Counseling procedures and problems are included because counseling is one of the basic responsibilities of the guidance counselor; however, these areas are discussed only generally. A detailed study would constitute a separate paper

    Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Drugs and Patients\u27 Health Care Seeking Behaviors

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    Known as direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA), pharmaceutical companies in the United States are permitted to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if an association exists between DTCA and health care-seeking behaviors. The theoretical framework for this study involved social learning theory, information integration theory, and prospect theory. The research questions identified if exposure to DTCA (a) is associated with physician office visits, (b) influences a patient/physician conversation regarding a prescription, (c) influences requesting a prescription, and (d) has an impact on patients\u27 ratings of the overall interaction with the physician. Data were derived from an online survey adapted from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Participants included 235 college-affiliated adults. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and analysis of variance. The Bonferroni correction was used to control the family-wise Type I error rate. The most significant findings of this study are that DTCA is associated with patients asking more questions, having more office visits, and patients having a lower overall health status. Future researchers should consider a non-college-affiliated sample and the post-implementation impact of the Affordable Care Act. This study helps to address the community challenges of how DTCA impacts prescription drug use and costs, as well as patients\u27 understanding of the associated risks. Having knowledge of the impact of DTCA can help patients and their communities, employers, and governments make more informed decisions that will positively impact their health, wellbeing, and prescription expenses

    MicroFedML: Privacy Preserving Federated Learning for Small Weights

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    Secure aggregation on user private data with the aid of an entrusted server provides strong privacy guarantees and has been well-studied in the context of privacy-preserving federated learning. An important problem in privacy-preserving federated learning with user constrained computation and wireless network resources is the computation and communication overhead which wastes bandwidth, increases training time, and can even impacts the model accuracy if many users drop out. The seminal work of Bonawitz et al. and the work of Bell et al. have constructed secure aggregation protocols for a very large number of users which handle dropout users in a federated learning setting. However, these works suffer from high round complexity (referred to as the number of times the users exchange messages with the server) and overhead in every training iteration. In this work, we propose and implement MicroFedML, a new secure aggregation system with lower round complexity and computation overhead per training iteration. MicroFedML reduces the computational burden by at least 100 orders of magnitude for 500 users (or more depending on the number of users) and the message size by 50 times compared to prior work. Our system is suitable and performs its best when the input domain is not too large, i.e., small model weights. Notable examples include gradient sparsification, quantization, and weight regularization in federated learning

    Assessing The Validity Of A Culturally Modified Drinking Motives Questionnaire For Use In Aboriginal Communities

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    Alcohol related harms disproportionately affect Aboriginal people in Australia. Motives to drink have been identified as the most proximal factor to alcohol consumption.The aim of this study is to assess the validity of a culturally modified Drinking Motives Questionnaire-Revised (DMQ-R) (Cooper, 1994) with Aboriginal participants. The study was cross sectional, utilising data collected via face-to-face surveys with a sample of adult Aboriginal participants. A convenience sample of 135 Aboriginal men (n=41) and women (n=94) from the Pilbara Region of Western Australia, who had consumed alcohol in the preceding 12 months. The Culturally modified DMQ-R (CDMQ-R) developed in consultation with Aboriginal community researchers and a local Aboriginal Community Reference Group was the primary outcome measure for this study. Confirmatory Factor Analysis indicated the four-factor model of drinking motives as measured by a culturally modified DMQ-R was valid for use with Aboriginal people of the Pilbara region. While most items loaded on the factor solution as hypothesised, there were some minor discrepancies which suggest further modification may be needed. In addition, the reduction of the original five-point scale to a three-point scale created statistical challenges. Future research might seek to further refine the DMQ-R for this population and determine an appropriate method for expanding the response scale incorporating advice from Aboriginal people

    Harmonisation of medical devices classification systems: development of a generalised approach starting from hip prostheses. A first example of an international and standardised nomenclature to be integrated within the European Medical Device Nomenclature

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    Medical device (MD) nomenclatures are essential for market surveillance and vigilance activities. Currently, more than 25 arthroplasty Registries are established in Europe, each of them based on a different MD nomenclature. A common and shared nomenclature of orthopaedic implants is important to analyse implant performance across different national databases referring to a unique definition of its characteristics. Aim of this study is to describe an approach to compare and harmonise two different nomenclatures: a first step towards the organization of an international nomenclature of medical devices

    Real-time individualized training vectors for experiential learning.

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    Military training utilizing serious games or virtual worlds potentially generate data that can be mined to better understand how trainees learn in experiential exercises. Few data mining approaches for deployed military training games exist. Opportunities exist to collect and analyze these data, as well as to construct a full-history learner model. Outcomes discussed in the present document include results from a quasi-experimental research study on military game-based experiential learning, the deployment of an online game for training evidence collection, and results from a proof-of-concept pilot study on the development of individualized training vectors. This Lab Directed Research & Development (LDRD) project leveraged products within projects, such as Titan (Network Grand Challenge), Real-Time Feedback and Evaluation System, (America's Army Adaptive Thinking and Leadership, DARWARS Ambush! NK), and Dynamic Bayesian Networks to investigate whether machine learning capabilities could perform real-time, in-game similarity vectors of learner performance, toward adaptation of content delivery, and quantitative measurement of experiential learning

    The Grizzly, November 8, 1994

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    \u27Straight Line Winds\u27 Damage Campus • Political Experts Discuss Election \u2794 • Mother Charged With the Murder of Two Sons • Security Guard to Teach Self Defense Course for Women • Halloween Predicted Race a Frightful Success • Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Zapped From Canadian TV • Natural Family Planning • Almuna Gives Insight for Life After Ursinus • Vic Henley Brings Southern Humor to Ursinus • ProTheatre Performs \u27Moving and Powerful\u27 Show • 1995 Ruby in the Works • No Opinion • Bears Stop Muhlenberg 21-14https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1346/thumbnail.jp

    Designing for Dissemination: Lessons in Message Design from 1-2-3 Pap

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    Despite a large number of evidence-based health communication interventions tested in private, public, and community health settings, there is a dearth of research on successful secondary dissemination of these interventions to other audiences. This article presents the case study of 1-2-3 Pap, a health communication intervention to improve human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination uptake and Pap testing outcomes in Eastern Kentucky, and explores strategies used to disseminate this intervention to other populations in Kentucky, North Carolina, and West Virginia. Through this dissemination project, we identified several health communication intervention design considerations that facilitated our successful dissemination to these other audiences; these intervention design considerations include (a) developing strategies for reaching other potential audiences, (b) identifying intervention message adaptations that might be needed, and (c) determining the most appropriate means or channels by which to reach these potential future audiences. Using 1-2-3 Pap as an illustrative case study, we describe how careful planning and partnership development early in the intervention development process can improve the potential success of enhancing the reach and effectiveness of an intervention to other audiences beyond the audience for whom the intervention messages were originally designed

    Working Time Society consensus statements: Evidence-based effects of shift work on physical and mental health

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    Ferguson, SA ORCiD: 0000-0002-9682-7971; Sargent, C ORCiD: 0000-0001-5340-4701Potential effects of shift work on health are probably related to the misalignment between the light-dark cycle and the human activity-rest cycle. Light exposure at night mediates these effects, including social misalignment and leads to an inversion of activity and rest, which, in turn, is linked to changes in behaviours. This article reviews the epidemiological evidence on the association between shift work and health, and possible mechanisms underlying this association. First, evidence from findings of the meta-analyses and systematic reviews published in the last 10 years is presented. In addition, it reports the larger single-occupation studies and recent large population-based studies of the general workforce. Koch's postulates were used to evaluate the evidence related to the development of disease as a result of exposure to shift work. Finally, we discussed limitations of the multiple pathways that link shift work with specific disorders and the methodological challenges facing shift work research. We concluded that the clearest indications of shift work being the cause of a disease are given when there is a substantial body of evidence from high quality field studies showing an association and there is good evidence from laboratory studies supporting a causal explanation of the link
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